Report on the four main types of research
Primary
research is research that is conducted by yourself to gather information for
the specific thing that you are researching; by doing this you are able to
tailor the questions specifically to your needs so that your results are more
accurate or more precise.
An example of
using primary research is when I was asked to make a questionnaire based on
‘The Musical Tastes and Habits of 13-16 year olds’, for this I had to conduct
my own questionnaire and carry out my own research to gather the information
that I needed to get accurate results. This meant that I could get very
specific results from my questionnaire which also enabled me to use the results
to make a music video that featured the things that were popular with the
target audience such as a storyline or lip syncing.
The advantages of using primary research are
that you are able to tailor the questions specifically to your needs and to the
questions that you want to ask, another advantage is that you can choose how
you format it, for example a questionnaire can be used for you to find out
information that you want on a specific topic.
The
disadvantages of using primary research is that, the process of conducting,
making and finding the research can be time consuming as you have to do it all
yourself and it could also cost money to produce it or to send it to people but
you can stop it from costing anything by using the internet to send it so it is
free to send.
Secondary
research is research that has been carried out and done by someone else but you
are able to use it for your needs if you are researching the same topic or
subject as them, by doing this you are able to get the results much quicker
than you would if you did it yourself.
An example of
using secondary research is when I was asked to make a Prezi on ‘Secondary
Research of Games’ for this I had to use secondary research resources such as
the internet to find out what type of games were the most popular and what type
of game I think a company should make to be successful.
The advantages
of using secondary research it is quicker to get the results because they have
already been done by someone. You can get a vast amount of results in a very
short time. It is cost effective as you don’t need to pay to conduct the
research.
The disadvantages
are that there is a possibility that the source of your research could not be
reliable.
Qualitative
research can be a source of primary or secondary research. This is a more text /
written type of research. Examples of this in primary research is things such
as interviews and questionnaires and for secondary research it can include
things such as news stories and reports or articles on the internet or in
magazines. It is used to gain knowledge of people’s feelings and opinions
towards certain topics.
An example of
using qualitative research is when I was asked to conduct a questionnaire about
peoples music tastes, for this I had to ask them what type of music they liked
and why, by asking them to expand and give reasons why they liked it I was able
to collect qualitative research.
The advantages
of using qualitative research are that it is easier to gain a wider understanding
on why people like certain things by asking them to expand on their answers.
The disadvantages
are that it can be very time consuming depending on how much data you need to
collect, it also takes longer to summarise as not all people will say the same
things.
Quantitative
research can also be a source of primary or secondary research. This is numbers
and statistic based such as 90% of people say… or 1/10 people say…. Examples of
this in primary research can be statistic from a questionnaire and for
secondary research could be from a news report saying how 1/10 people could
suffer from something. This type of research is used to show proportions of the
population.
An example of
using quantitative data is when I was asked to use secondary research to find
out information about films I made a presentation summarising my findings and
used graphs to represent the numbers of people that said certain things.
The advantages
of using quantitative research are that it is good to use for representing the
wider population and is easier to report or summarise your findings with.
The disadvantages
are that unless you get a representative sample then you may not have accurate
results.
